Techbargains Reviews

The Samsung SF510-A01 Laptop is a 15" Core i3 laptop intended for design-conscious consumers and students looking for an attractive, easy-to-use system that will get the job done. It aims to offer a new alternative to the "typical" laptop with standout connectivity and usability. Does it reach these goals? Mostly, yes it does. But first, here are the specs and features:

Classy Design - The curvy, glossy ivory case with chrome accents both inside and outside is classy looking. This is not bling. It's what bling is when it grows up. The interior deck is called "chocolate" brown, but we'd call it 85% dark chocolate. A 15" laptop is never going to qualify as ultra-portable, but they kept this one lightweight too, at 4.7 lb.

Long Battery Life - Energy Star helps this 6-cell Lithium polymer battery last about 4-5 hrs in real-world mixed usage. Samsung claims up to 7 hours of usage. Maybe ... but not if you're running accessories or using Wifi for any length of time. Samsung also claims up to 1,000 charge cycles in the battery's lifetime.

Great Connectivity, Including WiMAX Support - While WiMAX availability is still limited to major cities, it's nice to see Samsung embrace this connectivity option. It supplements the standard 3 Wi-Fi options on board, as well as gigabit Ethernet. For video connectivity, there is a standard VGA port, and HDMI. We hooked up the HDMI to a 55" LED set. The display appeared instantly in a 1366x768 window, and the output was stunning.

Always-On Chargeable USB Port - One of the USB ports is always-on, even when the laptop is asleep or turned off. This lets you charge any of your USB-chargeable devices without having the laptop powered up. We like that feature a lot.

Full Keyboard, Numeric Keypad, and Inverted T-Directional Pad - The keyboard has low profile keys with a springy feel. The standard QWERTY portion is actually the same size as many desktop keyboards. The full numeric keypad is always a treat on a laptop, and the inverted T navigation pad is also a useful feature.

"Fast Start" - Samsung has a hybrid sleep state that saves data to hard disk, but awakens in a quick 3 seconds. It's actually the default power-down choice in the Start menu, and can be activated simply by closing the laptop too.

Not Too Much Bloatware - It was refreshing to see a Start menu devoid of the bloatware that clogs so many commercial PCs. There is a suite of Cyberlink utilities, a Norton virus package, and starter edition of Microsoft Office (limited versions of Word and Excel). Bootup time was about a minute, due in part to the lean list of startup apps and utilities.

What We Didn't Like

Unstable Reporting of Remaining Charge - While the long battery life is a great feature, it was impossible to ever know precisely how much charge was left, because the remaining charge was reported differently from minute to minute. One minute it could say 2.5 hours remaining, and the next minute it could say 4.5 hours remaining. Basically, we worked on one of 2 premises: there was a lot of charge left; there was not a lot of charge left.

Speakers Are Mediocre - Our initial observation was that the sound was sizzlingly bright. There is so much high frequency emphasis that it was necessary to turn the volume way down. Part of this is due to the SRS Premium Sound package. It does enhance sound during feature film playback. Turning SRS off collapses the sound field and tames the sizzle. The speakers also offer no bass. There is simply no impact from the sound. One final issue is that the speakers are located on the bottom of the laptop. So, the sound can get muffled when the unit is on your lap, since the speakers are often covered by your legs.

Built-In Graphics Processing - While this machine does not promise that you can play the latest games at high frame rates, we feel we should be able to watch a single full-screen window of video without seeing a lot of macroblocking. Both Hulu and live digital OTA TV showed a lot of macroblocking (sometimes called pixelization or "digital artifacts"). DVD playback did not show this as much.

Glossy Screen with Very Narrow Sweet Spot - Glossy screens on laptops, sadly, are very common. However, in addition to the distraction of frequent glare, it took a lot of fiddling to get the screen angle just right for viewing video. The screen angle where the color-and contrast-shift stopped happened to be the angle that provided maximum glare from the background. Colors in DVDs seemed slightly shifted to the red.

Our Verdict

The Samsung SF510-A01 is a solid laptop with good looks, good performance, and very little not to like. Long battery life from the Lithium polymer battery is a standout feature, though some erratic reporting of remaining battery time is an issue that Samsung should fix. Navigation is better than many laptops, with an inverted T navigation keypad and an amply-sized, slightly texturized trackpad. Multimedia performance lags a little, as full screen video shows some digital artifacts and the speakers underwhelm us. The SF510 will work best for those looking for good (not extreme) all around performance and lots of connectivity options at a decent price (currently about $630 street price).
Our Score: 4 out of 5
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